lower east side edition nov/dec 2012
LO Ci
lo ci ‘lo,si,-,se,-,ke,-,ki,
plural form of LOCUS noun
1 a particular position, point, or place
it is impossible to specify the exact locus in the brain of these neural events.
2 the perceived location of something abstract the locus of power is the informal council.
ORIGIN - early 18th century: from Latin, ‘place’
LO Ci
Senior Editor Daniel Kanter Senior Designer & Creative Director Maggie Franks Art Director Jason Sherman Photography Director Natalie O'Moore Fashion Editor Katherine Mann Culture Editor Giulia Berrebi Publisher Endeavor Printing
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to Loci, a brand new bimonthly publication that seeks to bring the feeling of a place to the palm of your hand. This is not a guide book. It is not intended to be a full survey, nor does it purport to account for all of the intricacies, historic connections, social complications, or political considerations that compose a given region. Particularly not a region as complicated as one of the most vibrant communities in one of the most dynamic cities in the world. The Lower East Side is a perfect first specimen for this project: an area with a rich history and a vast diversity of views and perspectives. It is at once posh and unruly, a place that balances its gentrified future with a significantly rougher past. Despite the deep social divisions of which our magazine only skims the surface, it is ultimately a neighborhood that bands together and perseveres in the worst of times. When Hurricane Sandy hit the city, and devastated so much of the Lower East Side community, it was tempting to wonder if the disaster would be a watershed moment for the area in more ways than one. Yet that didn’t come to pass. Instead, as the flood waters receded, the Lower East Side collectively picked themselves up, dried themselves off, and got on with it. We were privileged to be conducting our probe during this galvanizing moment. We believe that everybody has a story: a voice to be heard, an insight worth sharing. We relied heavily on chance encounters, taking our journalistic leanings directly to the streets. From there, we waited to stumble upon something interesting. Something beautiful. Something that grabbed our attention and, on some level, our hearts. Of course, we could not include everything we did or saw or might have. But here is a slice. And we hope you enjoy it.
Postscript: Throughout this publication, we have placed a logo on pages for which there is additional content online: photographs, videos, and podcasts, all integrated on an interactive map. Go to confluence.gallatin.nyu.edu for more!
timeline
history of the lower east side
dumplings
COME WHAT MAY STREIT’S MATZO FACTORY
A LITTLE WICKED Ashley Carter Cash
The Team
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05 06 08 15 16 18 23 24 26 29 31 32
SEX, DRUGS, and the lower east side
THE PIT
BIKE POLO IN CHRYSTIE PARK
The Capital of Jewish America
Chocolate Matzo!
fashion archive
NEXT ISSUE
1643 1806
Located on Grand Street, Corlear’s Hook Market builds a fire bell on its cupola.
The Lower East Side becomes notorious for prostitution after the arrival of the fifth Dutch governor of New Netherlands. The Native village soon became referred to as Corlaer’s Hook, from which the term “hooker” originates.
1863
1888
Having been home to over 7, 000 from over 20 nations, the Lower East Side buildings that currently house the Tenement Museum is built.
Katz’s Delicatessen opens.
1893 1901
NYC acquires 4.4 acres off the East River, and creats Corlaer’s Hook Park, one of the first municipal parks.
Indoor toilets are added to 97 Orchard Street.
1912
1925
Lower East Side immigrant David Sarnoff receives and relays one of the most historic messages: “S.S. Titanic ran into iceberg, sinking fast.”
Streit’s Matzo Factory opens on Rivington Street.
1941 1974
Poet Bittman Rivas coins the term “Loisaida,” derived from a Hispanic pronunciation of “Lower East Side.”
Development takes place in the Cherry Street area, popularizing Vladeck’s 24 six-story building.
1998
$50 million plan to renovate the Vladeck Houses begins.
2000
Hasia Diner publishes Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America.
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STANTON AND LUDLOW
SEX, DRUGS, & THE LOWER EAST SIDE By Giulia Berrebi
T
he world suddenly stops. The chaos surrounding me disappears, along with the colors of summer. Golden leaves carpet the curb, create a roof over my head, and fly around me. The music they make underfoot echoes the purest sound. The sky is covered by a dense gray blanket of clouds, like a shield protecting me from the sun. I wander in the streets of the Lower East Side, an area with secrets. A heretical past emanates from its walls, floats in the streets and summons a feeling of nostalgia within me. Is it because of the light from the lampposts on humid pavement, or because of the sad faces behind the windowpanes of the cafés? I cannot describe nostalgia, only its effects: a desire for the past, for what is lost, for that special place. What was happening on the Lower East Side before I entered this world? Who were the authors behind the graffiti on the facades of buildings? What are the stories behind the street names that 6
have become so familiar? A discussion with Barnaby Ruhe, shaman and contemporary artist, helps to unravel the secrets and disclose the untold stories of the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side still bears the traces of a tumultuous past. Barnaby’s story begins in the 1970s, at a time when SoHo was in flux. Once home to the underground artist, SoHo became gentrified as a new workforce of art dealers took over the creative spaces of artists. With the studios in SoHo giving way to more and more galleries, the artists relocated to the Lower East Side. Abandoned buildings. Hazardous electrical wiring. No sewage. No running water. Nothing but a neighborhood where poverty reigned. “The point was that there was potential: it was cowboy territory,” Barnaby recalls with a hint of nostalgia in his voice. The Lower East Side was characterized by infinite possibilities, a place the artists had yet to give life to. “The energy was so profound you could not believe it,” he reflects, “it was
paintings by Barnaby Ruhe
drug-infested, the Upper East Side collectors and the chic girls with their fur coats could hardly get to SoHo for the openings because it was so far downtown, the East side was out of question! Leo Castelli was one of the few art dealers from SoHo who would sneak over to the Lower East Side and the East Village to see some of the new shows.” The legitimization of the Lower East Side occurred precisely at that moment: when the rest of New York City perceived the potential of the people who inhabited this decrepit area. Today, as I move across Houston street, I wonder what evidence is left of the stories I have been told. “There is still the art on the walls of the streets, the graffiti and the cafés. Yes, the cafés had a life of their own,” Barnaby tells me. The world has changed. We live in an era where technology has replaced the need to express ourselves. Yet the Lower East Side still bears traces of artistic freedom and rebellion and street art has remained an inherent part of the neighborhood’s identity.
The history of the Lower East Side is—and will continue to be—written on the walls and painted on the façades of the buildings. “The thing was a wild place,” Barnaby says, and I wonder what he means. I wonder what the Lower East Side meant to him. The answer is simple: revolution.“The revolution that I see is a break away from the hierarchy. What I mean is that I see Nico Smith, probably drunk. Hopeless guy. I see Bokov, and I see so many artists who are losers as far as the art world is concerned.” But the Lower East Side was a place where people came to win. It was great was because it hadn’t achieved a critical mass, but everybody was there—and by “everybody,” he means the entire underground art scene. “Truth comes out, there was Keith Haring and Basquiat, everybody was there, and I was there too.”
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CHRYSTIE AND BROOME CHRYSTIE AND BROOME
THE
PIT BY DANIEL KANTER PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON SHERMAN
“O
h, that’s so cute!” a tourist squeals excitedly, taking a moment to split off from her small fanny-packed group to peer down into “The Pit” in Chrystie Park, a sunken asphalt-covered multi-purpose space the size of a soccer field. It’s a cool day in early fall— which, by the mystical processes of New York weather, would be both one of the first and last in a season that never seems to linger very long. Cars rumble steadily off the Manhattan Bridge and up Chrystie Street, and the sidewalks just across the street are crowded and frenetic, as usual. But the park is comparably quiet and subdued. Locals sit around lazily on benches, drinking lattés and conversing quietly, while others rush through the park as a convenient cross-town shortcut. Even the homeless who sleep in the park are sitting quietly and soaking up the weather. The tourist only catches a glimpse of the Sunday afternoon bike polo match 10
before running back to join her uptownbound friends. At first glance, bike polo is kind of cute: six people riding around on bicycles, hitting at a small rubber ball with plastic polo mallets. The players don’t wear uniforms or appear to abide by any real order. Two small goals at either end of the court are variably guarded or left completely unattended, and there is no referee to enforce rules. Most significantly, the players hardly look like a legitimate team of athletes. Some of them wear helmets, but most don’t, and while everyone wears something on their hands, this ranges from slim spandex biking gloves to bulky hockey mitts. They appear to range in age from about sixteen to sixty. It only takes a few minutes of conversation with a player or two to understand just how very real bike polo is. The players—Devin, Chombo, Mack, Nick, Frank, and Adam—take a halftime break and
sit around on the ground, enjoying takeout containers of dumplings from the nearby neighborhood fixture, Vanessa’s. They’re happy to spread the gospel about bike polo and seem accustomed to answering my novice questions about the sport. While the event occurs every Sunday, normally there’s a bigger group in attendance. “This is the slowest day in months,” Devin says, citing a tournament in Boston to account for the slimmed-down roster. Evidently, tournaments are standard fare in “the Polo-verse.” In 2012 alone, there were 169 tournaments worldwide, with geographic locations spanning anywhere from St. Louis to Beijing. Last year, the world championship was in Geneva. “A few of the New York guys always try to make it to the championship, wherever it is,” Devin says. The furthest he’d ever traveled was to a tournament in Pensecol a twenty-four hour drive door-to-door.
Devin, a man his mid-thirties with the mannerisms and attitude of somebody about ten years younger, is a native of Dallas, Texas. His casual attitude and kindness makes him the sort of person who’s immediately endearing and easy to talk to. He seems popular in this group, anyway. Devin moved to New York six years ago to be a musician, and now plays guitar in two bands—Vile Hand and The Prigs. The latter is an 80s-style throwback rock group. He also plays zynth for the Blue Man Group, is a music director in an off-Broadway theater company, and brings in some extra cash doing food deliveries in Fort Greene. As if Devin doesn’t sound busy enough, it was his job as a mechanic at a bike shop in Brooklyn that led to him to the world of bike polo. Despite that he calls “the armpit of Brooklyn”—Ditmas Park—home, he manages to make it to Chrystie Park every 11
Sunday for a few hours of polo. “It’s great,” he explains, “I always take Sunday off and drink Four Loko all day from this water bottle.” He raises an opaque plastic sports bottle to his lips and takes a quick swig before continuing. “Have to make time for fun, you know?” Chombo, Devin’s teammate, with a wild head of straight black hair and a long, wispy beard, joins us, stealthily passing off a flask into Devin’s hand. “Blended scotch,” he says, turning toward me. While all the players were competitive on the court, Chombo’s pursuit of the polo ball seemed particularly voracious. After scoring a goal shortly before halftime, he pointed his mallet toward the sky, pretending to cock and fire it, as though it were a rifle. His tires completed an effortless victory circle before rejoining the action. Fixtures in the New York bike polo 12
scene, Chombo and Devin started the cheekily-named Los Marcos Polos, a team whose trademark look included wearing WWF masks while playing, presumably to either intimidate or amuse the competition. Later, they began Wagwan, which translates to “what’s going on?” in a Jamaican dialect. Chombo is from “the mother country” of New Jersey and currently resides in “The Crown”—Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He has lived in New York since attending Pratt, and has gone on to pursue a successful career in illustration—first in the world of anime, then at a design studio. After leaving the design studio, he took a job at a bike shop to sustain himself while he transitioned into life as a freelance artist. That’s when he found bike polo, just like Devin. “Everyone’s been hurt in the head, or worse,” he explains when describing his tournament gear. When I ask why he’s the
only player with knee pads, he props his leg up on his bike, unstraps the velcro, and rolls down a knee-sock to reveal a lump the size of a cumquat on his knee. “Chicago,” he says, “I don’t know what it is, like calcium deposits or some shit, but it hurt like a motherfucker and I couldn’t put weight on it for weeks.” He never got it checked by a professional. Serious injury without a follow-up trip to the hospital is, perhaps, emblematic of the laissez-faire attitude guiding the sport in general. Despite Devin and Chombo’s frequent references to the Polo-verse and the advanced inner workings of the bike polo world, the actual hard-and-fast guidelines are varied and malleable depending upon location, the type of event, and the types of players. No formal apparel is required, leaving it up to the players to decide how best to protect (or not protect, as the case may be) themselves. Then there is the little matter of
enforcing the rules. “New York is one of the cities, actually, who are pushing for refs and rules,” Devin explains. But the question of whether to employ referees, evidently, is a point of contention in the Polo-verse. Many teams prefer to self-monitor, with varying degrees of success. While the 3-on-3 format, invented by the New York bike polo community, is a standard across the polo-verse, things get significantly more muddled when it comes to other regulations of play, like the penalties for body-checking or taking one’s foot off the pedals. “Penalties can either last for thirty seconds or one minute, depending,” Chombo says. “Depending on what?” “Well, it’s not a real sport yet,” he replies, by way of explanation. That settles it. Everyone agrees, however, that the ball must 13
be decidedly hit into the goal, not shuffled. “That’s one of the things borrowed from the equestrian polo tradition,” Devin says, before throwing back another swig of Four Loko and gearing up to resume the second half of the game. The excitement of the bike polo game itself is elevated only by its setting. The Lower East Side—and Chrystie Park, specifically— has become a clash of old and new Lower East Side. An area once home almost exclusively to tenement-dwelling low-income immigrants has transformed into a bustling commercial region with some of the highest rents and sought-after apartments in the city. But the economic diversity within one square block of the park is staggering. It is no coincidence that all of our six bike poloists live across the water in various parts of Brooklyn rather than in the neighborhood where they come to play. “Back the fuck up off me!” we hear a stout woman yell next to the court. An elderly 14
man approaches her, slowly, his arms outstretched. She brandishes a wire granny cart like a club—above her head, ready to strike. “Back the fuck up off me, motherfucker!” she screams again and again, as she slowly backs up and the man continues his slow, methodical approach. A few of the polo players look up for a moment, but the game continues. On the benches surrounding the pit, everyone’s attention turns from the game to the fight. “He got a fuckin knife!” the woman yells manically, as she begins to swat the wire cart with all of her force at the man, beating him on the arms, chest, and back. Moments like this aren’t uncommon in a city of eight million people, where no amount of police force or public safety can possibly watch over all the inhabitants. It is a place that relies on bystanders—the assurance that somebody, eventually, will step in. Finally, somebody does: a man, midforties, who sat watching the fight unfold for
several minutes before, trying like the rest of us to assess the situation. As it turns out, the assailant is holding a small box-cutter in his hand, but after a few minutes of squabbling, he’s persuaded to vacate the area. The woman sits back down on her bench and settles in, tinkering with the broken wires on her cart, and the park returns once again to its relative peace and quiet, the loudest sounds once again emanating from The Pit as plastic mallets scrape against asphalt and make contact with the ball. Chombo scores the final goal that ends the game, and all the players return to the corner of the pit, dropping their bikes and taking swigs of whatever their water bottles contain. Devin goes in the opposite direction and kisses a woman who leans over the railing of the Pit before coming back to join the group, where the men are already engaged in a lively conversation that I can’t follow. “One point twenty-one gigawatts!” I hear somebody scream as I walk away. I know the reference—the 1985 hit Back to the Future—but the context, here, is beyond me. Still, there’s something poignant about its invocation: a movie that, at its core, is less about time travel, a flux capacitor, and
a supremely tricked-out DeLorean than it is about the unlikely friendship between a wiry-haired Dr. Emmett Brown and a teenaged Marty McFly. Sunday bike polo in Chrystie Park is kind of like that, in a way. Here are six men, the differences between them greater than the similarities. Through a varied set of circumstances, they’ve found themselves in The Pit, have carved out their own space in a city where space is so often lacking. They may not live on the Lower East Side themselves, but they define the very eccentricities, bizarre kinships, unlikely generosity, and baseline weirdness that makes it what it is.
Walk over to the next block and eat like a bike polo champ! Vanessa's Dumpling House has been an institution for years, so check out their Lower East Side location on 118 Eldridge St. (between Broome St & Grand St). Our personal favorites? The veggie dumplings and sesame pancakes. Authentic, cheap and absolutely delicious: a recipe for success.
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THE CAPITAL OF JEWISH AMERICA BY GIULIA BERREBI PHOTOS BY KATHERINE MANN
GRAND AND PITT
“The city is like poetry,” E.B. White
wrote, “it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.” The Lower East Side is perhaps the greatest of all poems, home to a multitude of cultures, traditions, and energies… And as I walk east below Delancey, East of the island, I no longer recognize the city I claim to be mine. I am a stranger in a strange land. How can I orient myself when proper nouns have replaced the numbers on the street signs? Where are the steel and glass buildings I am so familiar with? I continue to walk, disoriented. Spanish. Chinese. Hebrew. Polish. These are the languages quickly recognize as I glance at the store fronts. The Lower East Side was a neighborhood of immigrants, Rabbi Zvi Romm later explains to me. Grand Street. I now stand before the astonishing Bialystoker Synagogue, the epicenter of the Jewish Manhattan. Colorful windows, decorated with a simple star of David, lighten the severe stone facade. Serenity and comfort emanate from the dignity of the edifice, contrasted by the splendor of its interior. I quickly snap a photograph, before Rabbi Romm invites me inside the synagogue.
“Historically, the Lower East Side was always a very warm neighborhood, where people extended themselves to other in ways that were extraordinary, in spite of how hard times may have been. Tremendous amount of caring and support goes on in the area” he declares, indicating the stairs that leads to the women’s gallery. I lean over the edge of the mezzanine, the sunlight filters through the stained glass windows as I examine the elegant room. The Bialystoker synagogue will forever remain a jewel in this labyrinth of monotonous concrete slabs. “The Lower East Side has a little town atmosphere for the Jewish community,” David Sitzer, whose family has been living in the area for generations, tells me proudly as he waves at the owner of Moishe’s bakery. “There used to be five hundred synagogues in the Lower East Side. Signs in Yiddish, kosher butchers…” he proceeds, as we cross over to the other side of the street so that I can delight in a cinnamon roll. Today, many of these synagogues have been converted into other religious centers and businesses, and while only fifteen synagogues still operate in the area, a formidable sense of community has remained. Radical changes have occurred over the past decades, but the sense of harmony that reigns over the Lower East Side is immutable. 17
RIVINGTON AND SUFFOLK
COME WHAT MAY Streit’s Matzo Factory BY DANIEL KANTER PHOTOS BY NATALIE O’MOORE
Walking down Rivington, the air
shifts almost imperceptibly as damp heat and the smell of baking envelops the street. With unassuming, turn of the century tenement buildings lining both sides of the block, it’s easy to miss the source. But at the corner at Suffolk, a small red ovular vinyl sticker is affixed to a plate-glass window, reading only the word “Streit’s.” “Since 1925,” is says below, in smaller text. The interior of the public shop is about as impressive as the exterior, which is to say: not very. The walls are glazed with unassuming white tile and lined with shelves stocking carefully-organized jars and boxes, each with the word “kosher” emblazoned prominently on the packaging. Behind the counter hangs a ragtag display of Judaica and a grouping of oil paintings of various members of the Streit family, but the portraits look oddly formal and out of place in this context.
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What isn’t immediately obvious is that Aron Streit, Inc.—colloquially known as Streit’s Matzo Company—holds about 40% of the the United States Matzo market, or that the four adjacent tenement buildings are actually home to a 47,000 square foot matzo factory rather than apartments. An open doorway reveals four workers quickly removing freshly-baked sheets of Matzo from a conveyor belt, where they are rapidly broken and boxed. Despite the speed with which they work, it’s still hard to imagine that 16,000 pounds of matzo are produced here each day. Make that 30,000 pounds around Passover. Only two weeks after Hurricane Sandy ravaged both the neighborhood, the whole city, and coastal regions of New York and New Jersey, it seems like everything is business as usual at Streit’s—nary a thing out of place, the factory running like a well-oiled machine. The shop is empty today, save for one employee 20
who sits in a back corner, taking a call. When he’s finished, he promptly offers me a square of matzo, which is still warm from the oven. A short, heavyset man who wears a casual collared shirt, jeans, and a yarmulke, he can’t be older than thirty. But Adam has worked at Streit’s for twelve years. He isn’t part of the Streit family, technically, but he might as well be. Having grown up only three blocks from the matzo factory, this is the only job he’s ever held. Normally he’s behind the scenes as a factory worker, but today his machine is broken so he has been moved out front. He is quiet, perhaps a bit awkward, and speaks in the subdued, kind tone so characteristic of men in the Jewish community of New York. Perhaps because he isn’t used to dealing with customers directly, Adam and I do the only thing New Yorkers know how to do after a crisis: we talk about it. Adam tells me that the factory on Rivington didn’t
flood during Sandy, but like the rest of the Lower East Side, it was without power for a week. Unable to work, the factory sat stagnant, causing a devastating ripple effect on production (and, presumably, cashflow). “I’m usually in the factory for sixty hours a week,” he explains, “but I don’t even know how much we’ll have to work to make up for this. We might have to do a night shift.” He says all of this matter-of-factly, strikingly devoid of self-pity. More dire than the factory on Rivington closing shop for a week, however, is Streit’s flooded warehouse in New Jersey, where the inventory is stockpiled. “I don’t know how bad it is there,” Adam says quietly. “It’s still shut down, nobody knows when it will be back up.” It isn’t as though the company doesn’t know what it’s like to weather uncertainty. Due to the gentrification and skyrocketing
real estate costs on the Lower East Side over the past thirty years, Streit’s has even considered moving operations from the place they’ve called home for nearly nine decades— risking their equipment, their ingredients, and most importantly, their flavor. In 2007, it was reported that the company was selling the warehouse on Rivington to developers and moving to New Jersey, but due to the economic downturn and falling real estate costs, the deal fell through. Yet it was a natural disaster rather than an economic one that proved to be the most financially devastating event for Streit’s in recent history, and one for which the full effects had probably not been entirely accounted for. Perhaps it’s the company’s long, seemingly unshakable history, or Adam’s religious faith, or just that it’s finally a calm day in the neighborhood after all the chaos, but I can’t help but feel that he’s oddly relaxed 21
about the whole thing. But maybe that’s just what happens when you’re born and raised in New York and spend a large portion of your life working for a company with hardscrabble roots, in a neighborhood with a decidedly unglamorous history. Maybe nothing much fazes you after a while, and that’s how you stay afloat. “How much for a pack of chocolate macaroons,” I ask before heading out, motioning toward one of the small foil packages on the counter. “Oh, no charge,” he says, waving his hand in the air. “Are you sure? Really, I don’t mind paying,” I counter. “No, it’s no problem,” he says, handing me a package. “On the house.”
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HOUSTON AND CLINTON
A LITTLE WICKED ASHLEY CARTER CASH AND FASHION IN THE LES BY KATHERINE MANN PHOTOS BY KATHERINE MANN AND MAGGIE FRANKS
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It’s midday on a cloudy Tuesday
in New York. You’re walking down Clinton Street, where it’s still too early for the stylish neighborhood kids to come out and play. Your eyes settle on a bodega cat who is—like you— in search of something to brighten up this average afternoon. As you’re about to cross Houston and abandon the Lower East Side for the day, you see her step out Pinalito Resturant holding a brown paper bag with what looks like lunch. You’re suddenly reminded why you ventured to these small streets close to the East River. With a bold clash of patterns and daring red hair that somehow shines despite the lack of sun, she embodies the eccentric and inimitable fashion you know can singularly be found in this area of the city. 26
You pause, wondering if you should ask to take her picture. As she is about to pass you, you work up the courage to stop her, shyly explaining that you love her black, cagelike shoes. But instead of the polite, quick “thanks” you expect, you’re greeted by a large, excited smile. “Thank you so much!” she says. She agrees to a picture and, after a few confident poses are captured, she informs you of her store—A Little Wicked, only a few steps away. A few quick paces and you find yourself in front of a charming boutique, decorated with sugar skulls and masks in preparation for the late October holidays. Moving from the busy sidewalk and entering the store, you’re greeted by an array of vintage pieces that speak for themselves in a language
of exotic patterns and intricate lace. She officially introduces herself as Ashley Carter Cash: buyer for New York’s go-to vintage boutique, A Little Wicked. She has lived on the Lower East Side for eight years—as the manager of a café, an artist, and now a buyer for the shop. Conceived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, she’s the love child of an artist and a yoga instructor. Her boyfriend is a rockabilly named Bruce, who has slicked back hair and sailor tattoos. Today is their anniversary. Fashion on the Lower East Side in one word: “Eccentric. Very, very eccentric.” Ashley explains that you can find girls in Cosby sweaters and others in Balmain dresses walking the same streets. And it’s true—an hour ago, you saw a girl walking down
Stanton in a gold-netted skirt and an oversized floral sweater. When asked if her style has changed over the years, Ashley answers a prompt “no.” But her style is different everyday, she notes— come back tomorrow and you might see her in leather pants and a pompadour. A mix of new and old, Ashley explains that the Lower East side is a place where two generations have learned to mesh. There are stores like Edith and Daha, which have been around for ages. The two owners recently split, so now it’s just Edith. And then there are new stores, like her friend’s vintage shop, Narnia, down on Rivington. That sixty year old gallery owners routinely interact with twenty-something fashionistas enables a unique, distinctive culture. It is through these people—from 27
Ashley to the deli owner with his uncooperative cat—that the essence of the area is revealed. Each unique and peculiar in their own way, inside and out, they make up the eccentricity that is the Lower East Side. And even though the neighborhood is constantly evolving, changing even during her time there, she loves it. As you’re about to leave, she invites you to the store’s three-year anniversary party, which happens to be tonight. You take down her information and promise to visit again, and you mean it. Ashley Carter Cash is the sort of person who does that to people—as alluring as she is magnetic, she’ll always have more stories to tell and insights to share. The sun is setting and you head north, back into the comparably black-trench-coated
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forest that is the rest of Manhattan. But you know you can always go back into that special world, where MC Hammer pants and crushed velvet tops are embraced. Maybe even tonight. A Little Wicked 279 E. Houston St. Between Clinton & Suffolk New York, NY 10002 212.777.1190 bianca@alittlewicked.com Store Hours: Tues-Sat: 12-8 Sunday: 12-6 Closed Monday
LES FASHION ARCHIVE: 70s and 80s
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OVERHEARD ON THE LES Conductor: Hello, and welcome to the mobile sauna bath. Vendor: I’ve only washed blood off money once. And I was on so many drugs, and in such a rush...
EMT: Did you call an ambulance? Drunk Girl: I can't breathe, bitch!
Little girl: I want to step in the puddles. Sassy mom: Do you want me to step on your face?
Old hobo: I’m not a crackhead, I’m a pirate!
Waiter #1: How are you? Waiter #2: I’m fine as long as I don’t see your face!
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THE TEAM
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NEXT LOCI‌. Loci takes Wynwood, a vibrant neighborhood in Downtown Miami. Gentrification has been taking place in Wynwood, where art, fashion and technology have come together to create one of Miami’s most inspirational districts.
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we love CITIES. The chance encounters of walking through a certain district,
finding a new coffee shop, a clothing
HIDDEN places see people store, a The
park.
you go, the things you
, the
you meet along the way:
each experience is unique to certain city streets. Loci is here to take that experience to the page.
We are the
modern day flaneurs—and
we do it so that wherever
YOU
wherever you are, you can
our corner of the
live,
experience
world,too.
And hopefully, when you finally get there, you’ll know where to go.